About PQE-2008

The Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics, known as PQE, is an annual physics conference that attracts the world's experts in laser physics, quantum physics, and many other areas. This was the 38th year of the meeting.

A special issue of The Journal of Modern Optics (volume 55, Nos. 19-20, 2008) was published as a proceedings for the conference. The following is a reprint of the foreword of that special issue.

The 38th Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics was held in Snowbird, Utah from January 6 to 10, 2008, continuing the tradition of being one of the longest running conferences in laser physics. Participants enjoyed very high quality talks surrounded by the magnificent splendor of the mountains in the Wasatch-Cache National Forest.

As in past years, the conference started with a reception Sunday evening in honor of the recipients of the 2008 Willis Lamb medal. This is an award presented annually to a member of the community who has made a significant impact to the field of laser science. This years winners were Gershon Kurizki from The Weizmann Institute, cited for “his contributions to the theory of short-time quantum decay and decoherence and their dynmaical control”, Mark Raizen from the University of Texas at Austin, for “his experimental observation of dynamical localization, non-exponential decay and Zeno and Anti-Zeno effects” and Wolfgang Schleich from the Universität Ulm, for “his work on interference in phase space, quantum state engineering and dynamical localization.”

This year, 193 participants attended 31 plenary and 144 invited talks. The talks covered a wide range of topics, including coherent alignment, CARS and other ultrafast topics, plasmonics, ultracold fermions and bosons, slow and fast light, novel laser systems including quantum cascade lasers, metamaterials, and quantum coherent effects. A copy of the program is found in the follow pages as well as the conference website http://www.pqeconference.com/, which has the programs for all meetings since 2001.

The conference was organized by Marlan Scully of Texas A&M and Princeton Universities, M. Suhail Zubairy of Texas A&M University, and George R. Welch, also of Texas A&M University.

This special issue is a sampling of the papers given at this conference. They present theoretical and experimental advances in many of the topical areas covered by the conference and are a representation of the high quality physics presented at the Physics of Quantum Electronics.

Frank A. Narducci
Naval Air Systems Command, USA

George R. Welch
Texas A&M University, USA

PQE Main Page.